Spark: A Creative Anthology Contest Seven

Details

Deadline:Oct 1, 2014
Fee:None. Entrants may make an optional donation at http://SparkAnthology.org/support

Theme

Like darkness and light, Yin and Yang, monsters and marvels are two sides of the same coin. Each entry should include both a monster and a marvel—though “monster” and “marvel” may refer to same element of your entry. For a prose example, see the imaginative short story by Peter Medeiros, Silence Like a Falling Chandelier.

The theme for this contest invites open interpretation: are monsters physical manifestations of evil, or the internal demons that plague us all? Marvels: fantastic bestiary creatures, or the resilience of human spirit?

Featured Artwork

This interpretation of our theme was provided by artist Tyler Lamph.

Guest Judges

Formats

  • Poetry: Any style, meter, rhyme scheme, or form, but must be less than 300 lines.
  • Prose: Fiction or creative nonfiction must be no more than 12,000 words.

Awards

There are prizes for both poetry and prose categories, so each prize level has two winners. The Grand Prize award package includes cash, publication, and a Lifetime Premium Membership here at Scribophile. See the contest details page at http://SparkAnthology.org/contests/seven/ for the full prize list.

How to Enter

This contest is not hosted by Scribophile, so posting it for critique won’t enter you in the contest (but it will increase your chances of winning)! For full contest guidelines, rules & restrictions, and links to enter your work, see http://SparkAnthology.org/contests/seven/.

About the Guest Judges

E. Lily Yu is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, and narrative designer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as McSweeney’s, Boston Review, Clarkesworld, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. She is a doctoral student at Cornell and a recent graduate of the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop.

Lisa Mangum has worked in the publishing department of Deseret Book since 1997. She is currently the Managing Editor for the Shadow Mountain imprint and has worked with several New York Times best-selling authors, including Ally Condie, James Dashner, and Jason F. Wright. While fiction is her first love, she also has experience working with nonfiction projects (memoir, educational, cookbooks, etc.) and some children’s picture books.

She loves finding that “diamond in the rough” in the slush pile, and she is particularly skilled in the developmental editing part of the process. Lisa is also the author of four national best-selling YA novels (The Hourglass Door trilogy and After Hello). She graduated with honors from the University of Utah, and currently lives in Taylorsville, Utah, with her husband, Tracy.

Winning entries

Winners have been announced! Log in to see them.

Prizes

1st prize:Too big to possibly list here

Rules

For full contest guidelines, rules & restrictions, and links to enter your work, see http://SparkAnthology.org/contests/seven/. A few notable points from that list:

  • Publication Rights remain with the author or poet. Grand Prize winners are not obligated to publish their winning entry in Spark, but if our publication offer is accepted, the cash portion of the prize serves to purchase First Publication rights as outlined on our Rights & Rates page.

  • Because this contest is judged blindly—that is, the author’s name is withheld from the judges—please omit personal information (such as author name or contact details) from the manuscript.

  • Judges will be unable to provide feedback on specific pieces.

  • Spark: A Creative Anthology reserves the right to post “No Award” for either category in the event that fewer than 30 total entries are received or fewer than three qualified entries can be selected for the final round of judging. This has happened before: in Contest Three (too few total entries) and Contest Five (too few finalists).

Submission guidelines

  • For full contest guidelines, rules & restrictions, and links to enter your work, see http://SparkAnthology.org/contests/seven/.

  • Contest entries will be accepted from September 15, 2014 until the stroke of midnight, U.S. Pacific Time, on October 2, 2014. (In other words, make sure your entries are in before 11:59 pm on October 1).

  • There are no genre restrictions for this contest, and content guidelines are similar to our standard submission guidelines, including what we are not accepting.

  • Contests award prizes for poetry and prose according to our contest judging criteria.

  • Prose includes both fiction and creative nonfiction, but we have not divided the category further because we believe that well-written creative nonfiction should tell a story so well that the result is indistinguishable from fiction. Prose must be less than 12,000 words.

  • Poetry includes all styles, meters, and rhyme schemes, or may be free-form. Poetry must be less than 300 lines.